metrics

A one-minute clip of Steve Ballmer explaining IBM's obsession with counting thousands of lines of code (KLOCs) as a measure of programmers. He explains why that metric is useless.

Kurzgesagt argues that Facebook's claimed 8 billion daily video views are inflated by freebooting, meaning re-uploads of creators' videos. It describes how this harms independent creators.

Elm creator Evan Czaplicki's 2018 Elm Europe talk on how to define success for an open source project and language community. It argues against judging projects by GitHub activity and touches on community expectations.

A short clip from The Wire in which police officers manipulate crime statistics to make the numbers look better. It dramatizes how metrics get gamed.

Shaun's roughly 2.7-hour video essay on The Bell Curve. It covers intelligence, the g factor, IQ tests, IQ versus environment and the politics behind the book, with a critical reading of the sources.

Veritasium takes an IQ test and examines what IQ measures, its history including military use and eugenics, its controversies, and how it correlates with life outcomes. Experts including Cecil Reynolds and Stuart Ritchie contribute.

Excerpts from W. Edwards Deming's Red Bead Experiment, where workers draw beads from a bowl and are judged on red ones that are largely down to chance. It shows how system variation, not individual effort, drives results.

A one-minute clip from the 1992 film Sneakers in which characters defeat a voice-authentication system by splicing recorded phrases, ending on the line "My voice is my passport." It was posted to illustrate a post on government surveillance.

Policy advisor Simon Anholt presents the Good Country Index, a measure of how much each nation contributes to the world beyond its own borders. In a funny TED talk he argues governments should think globally, and reveals which countries rank surprisingly.

Tested explains how Apple's Touch ID recognizes fingerprints, then tries to defeat it using fake fingers and prints, retracing methods claimed by a German computer club.

A two-minute excerpt of Robert Kennedy's 1968 University of Kansas speech criticizing GDP as a measure of national worth. He notes it counts harmful spending while ignoring what makes life worthwhile.

Raymond Hettinger's PyBay 2018 keynote on preventing, finding and fixing bugs under a time budget. He covers testing practice, type annotation tradeoffs and the limits of coverage metrics.

A two-minute scene from The Wire in which Baltimore police brass pressure subordinates to fix the crime statistics. It dramatizes how metrics and incentives distort policing.